Like sand
by Jinna
Summary: A Master Jedi in exile on a remote desert planet sets out on the most difficult journey: the one to the deepest layers of his heart…


**LIKE SAND**

**Disclaimer**: every place, character, situation that exhibits the unmistakable SW trademark belongs to the 'venerable Flanelled One'. No rights infringment is intended. Love is the answer… :-)

**Note:** I've started writing again about that galaxy far, far away after reading the novelization of ROTS. The characterization of Obi-Wan Kenobi took my breath away. A full relief tragic character. True incarnation of the fatal flaw of the Jedi: their incapacity to welcome the light of the emotions without falling into the shadow they always cast.

**Summary**: a Master Jedi in exile on a remote desert planet sets out on the most difficult journey: the one to the deepest layers of his heart…

Feedback is welcome, but please, not too "wude": I'm from the Outer Rim and don't fully master Basic. Btw, I quoted a a few passages from ROTS novelization: unfortunately I didn't get to read the English version, so had to translate back from the... translation :-/ Don't flame me! I didn't twist the meaning... I hope :-)

* * *

_Like sand.__  
That I've been_._  
Passive. Patient. I let your undertow mould me, drag me with the gentleness of your wet touch_._  
Like sand I've been ground for your transparent frailty…_

…"Padmé, I won't tell the Council about our conversation. Not at all. I'm sorry to burden you in such a way, and I hope …I hope I didn't cause you too much pain. We've been friends for such a long time …and I hope we will always be"…

_Always_. Master Yoda once told me that eternity is an endless now. Odd. Only in this place I start giving these words a physical shape. In this blazing wasteland. Where nothing flows and it's eternally... now.  
In this melting heat everything turns into glass. Memories too. I gather their splinters with the care and precision of an Alderaanian restorer. I no longer fear their sharpness though. I meekly welcome it. The living nature of the Force throbs in the never-ending cycle of pain and regeneration. Or maybe, again, I'm deceiving myself. I welcome it because it's part of me, part of the ones who no more have senses to sense it. Because it's part part of him… part of _you_. 

_Liquid, silent relief. Thanks to you I could look at the sun without being blinded__.  
And yet I let it tear you away fron your soft bed.  
So that nothing of you was left but steam…_

…"Anakin loved you at first sight, in that orribile junkyard on Tatooine. He's never even tried to hide it, but we don't talk about it. We pretend…I don't know. And I was happy about it, because it made him happy. You made him happy, when nothing else really could"…

I pretended I didn't know. To save you both... to save myself. To save myself I doomed you both. I burdened _your_ tiny back with the burden of my failure. I screened myself behind _your_ love for him. Nevertheless I came to terms with this fatal flaw. It's the way of the Jedi: one without reward, without remorse, without regret… But words often hide the truth in their double bottoms. And however hard we try to bend them under the yoke of a superior ethics, however hard we subjugate them to our point of view or our own interest, they keep on echoing through the unconfessable caves of our soul. "I screened myself behind _your_ love for him"… Only in the dazzling light of the twin suns I finally realized. And accepted. I followed the way of the Jedi to reach the depths of… regret.

_Only sand I've been.  
Drawings of dust in the fury of the waves.__  
It yields ground waiting for the calm. Impassively starts settling again.__  
That's why the storm can't win. Can't defeat it…_

…"Killing Obi-Wan so easy it is not"…

Semplicity, that's my power. Master Windu was convinced of that. _My_ power… Power's never been a source of pride for me. It doesn't belong to me: I belong to it. I'm a simple tessera in a very complex mosaic, tool of a will that's beyond mine. A long way awaits my weary steps. A destiny to be fulfilled. That's why I survived the descent of darkness. I survived battles already lost. But the hardest battle, surviving my own survival, that I'm still fighting … Maybe I'll never stop fighting it.

_I didn't back out of your placid, stubborn backwash.  
You are part of my substance and yet for ever parted…_

…Senator Amidala didn't definitely seem inclined to consider Master Kenobi a dangerous outlaw. On the contrary. She looked like she was hugging him and her voice was broken when she said she was happy, far too much indeed, to see the Jedi still live…

I let go any attachment. That was the only answer to a question I'd never dared to ask anybody. Neither myself. The only answer I had at that time.But the baptism of solitude, in this endless expanse of mirages, wears away preconceptions. Shatters certainties. The horizon flickers, mists, dissolves. Without barriers and borders, the living Force suggests new horizons of limitless compassion. Of forgiveness and acceptance. The voice of the wind shades into the soothing whisper of Qui-Gon, of all the desert Jinns…_ Love is the answer to darkness._

_And when your crystal essence has been violated by the furious rage of the waves;  
when every single particle of my being has given itself up to your harrowing currents …  
Only sand I've been. Nothing else than sand.  
_

…Obi-Wan was sitting close to her; he gripped a cold and motionless hand in his hands. "Don't give up, Padmé…you can't leave us"… He squeezed her hand as though he could keep life in her body by simply exerting a pressure. "Padmé, you must resist"…

I stopped counting the days. Those to come. Those to let go. Every moment is here, now. To be cherished and protected. I stopped looking for _you_. Putting an end to my quest I finally found _you_. _You_ are everywhere. In the wisdom of my old Master who comes back to teach me the power of giving oneself. In the humid film that even on this thirsty planet welcomes the sunsrise beading the rocks. _You_ are the unreachable sea mirage in the hottest time of the day. _You_ beat proud and generous in _your_ son's heart. _You_ beat in mine. Eternally now.

_There is no death, there is the Force.  
I loved you like sand loves the sea.__  
Passive, patient, humble sand._

**END**


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